A liquid crystal display (LCD) device is applied in various fields because it has low power consumption and can be formed into a thin plane.
An LCD device includes a liquid crystal panel including a liquid crystal present between transparent substrates and polarizing plates attached to both surfaces of the liquid crystal panel.
The polarizing plate generally has a structure shown in FIG. 1. That is, the polarizing plate 1 may include a polarizer 11, and protective films 12a and 12b attached to both surfaces of the polarizer 11. The polarizing plate 1 may also include a pressure-sensitive adhesive layer 13 formed under the protective film 12b and used to attach to a liquid crystal panel, and may further include a releasing film 14 formed under the pressure-sensitive adhesive layer 13. Although not shown in FIG. 1, the polarizing plate may include an additional functional film such as a reflection preventing film.
In such a structure of the conventional polarizing plate, to provide a device having a smaller thickness and light weight, for example, as described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2002-014226, there have been attempts to form the polarizing plate while omitting one of the protective films 12a and 12b formed on both surfaces of the conventional polarizer 11.
However, it is difficult to provide a polarizing plate with desired performance without using a protective film.